Second DLC expansion. Released on March 28th 12AM local on console, and March 27th 9PM EST on Steam.
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First DLC expansion.
---------------------...there's an inherent beauty that can be found within everything, beyond all the withering and decay. Also, thumbs up. - Hidetaka Miyazaki

Spoiler Policy: Use tags on anything that seems important. If you need help with a boss, spoiler tag everything but the first letter in each word. If you're coming from the early release thread, don't spoil poo poo for people

Dark Souls III is the capstone to FromSoftware's iconic dark fantasy action-RPG franchise known for intricately crafted levels, thick meaty combat, haunting atmospheres, complex lore told through the environment and NPC dialogue, replayability, and above all for providing a challenging but fair experience. The series is also well known for its unique tying of multiplayer elements, both active and passive, to what is fundamentally a single player experience. Active elements include summoning other players to aid you against the hordes of enemies you'll be facing as well as being unwittingly invaded by other players whose sole aim is to mercilessly slaughter you. Passive elements include player written messages bearing helpful (or harmful) advice and bloodstains that shows the last few moments of a player's life. And no longer constrained to the technical specifications of decade-old consoles, Dark Souls III is an absolutely stunning game with the series's typically wonderful aesthetics enhanced by higher fidelity, with truly "lived-in" environments and wonderful detail to every stone cobble or plank of wood.

Burial gifts
Gifts given at burial; you pick one at character creation.Life Ring
Ring set with a small red jewel. Raises Maximum HP.Divine Blessing
Warm, blessed holy water. Fully restores HP and cures ailments.Hidden Blessing
Pure, blessed holy water. Fully restores FP.Black Firebomb
Firebomb charged with a special block. An uncouth gift for the departed.Fire Gem
Material used to upgrade fire weapons. More appropriate for a warrior than pretty trinkets.Sovereignless Soul
The sovereignless soul of one who slept beside you. Use to acquire many souls.Rusted Gold Coin
Burial item for good fortune after death. Greatly increases item discovery for a short while.Cracked Red Eye Orb
Online play item. One use only. Become a dark spirit and invade another world.Young White Branch
Branch of a young white birch, perhaps an offering of peace. Can be used to blend into environment, but only once.

Beginner Tips
+ It pays to stop and examine your surroundings, and to listen for signs of enemies.
+ Your starting class only determines your starting equipment and stats. When you level up, you can choose any stat to raise, and you can change equipment at any time. You can also respec your stats at a certain place in the game.
+ Pyromancies have intelligence AND faith requirements to cast. They also scale with these stats, having a soft-cap of 40/40, although they are plenty strong at minimal levels.
+ Miracles and Sorceries require and scale with faith and intelligence, respectively. Soft-cap is at 60, and >40 is required if you want to have magic as your primary form of offense.
+ Hexes are back, but rather than being cast with chimes like miracles, are instead a sub-category of either Sorceries, Miracles, or Pyromancies depending on the specific Hex, and scale with both Int and Fth.
+ Both magic-using characters and melee characters benefit from focus points (FP) as Skills consume them.
+ Restore HP with an (orange) Estus Flask, restore FP with a (blue) Ashen Estus Flask. Your allotment of orange/blue Estus can be configured at the blacksmith in the main hub.
+ Skills are special moves that weapons have. It may be a stance that allows for unique attacks, a damage boost, or something entirely unique to that weapon.
+ Regular attacks for weapons vary based on how you are holding them and your actions immediately prior to attacking. To start, each weapon has a light attack and a heavy attack. The nature of this attack changes based on whether you are one-handing or two-handing the weapon. There are also variations of the light attacks by running/backstepping then attacking or dodging. Dodging and then using a heavy attack will perform the weapon's second heavy attack (i.e. as if you were to press heavy attack twice in a row). Pressing forward+light attack will cause you to do a jump attack. Pressing forward+heavy attack will cause you to do a guard-breaking kick. When you get a new weapon, it's a good idea to test out its entire moveset. In addition to regular attacks, you can use Skills, parry/ripostes, and backstabs with weapons.
+ Activate your Skill (consumes FP) by pressing L2/LB. If you have a weapon in each hand, pressing the Skill button will activate the skill for the weapon in your LEFT hand (for some weapons). If you are two-handing a single weapon, the skill will activate for that weapon.
+ Some shields can parry enemies, indicated by a shield symbol on the shield's icon. When an enemy is attacking you, press L2/LB to parry them. The enemy will stagger, and you can riposte for high damage. Not all enemies can be parried.
+ Some shields can perform a shield bash, where you rush forward and break the enemy's guard.
+ Some shields will allow you to perform your right hand weapon's Skill, indicated by a sword symbol on the shield's icon.
+ You can backstab enemies. Circle behind them and attack their back to initiate a backstab for high damage. Not all enemies can be backstabbed.
+ Try to always have a ranged option available, whether it's a bow, a throwing knife, or magic. You can use ranged attacks to pull enemies away from dangerous or uncertain environments to safer fighting grounds.
+ If you are coming from playing just Bloodborne, be aware that most weapons will not rally/recover your HP if you hit an enemy with them. There is however a ring that restores your HP after a number of successive attacks.
+ There may be hidden paths behind illusory walls. Hit walls if you think they don't fit in. If there is a message on the ground that says "illusory wall ahead" or "hidden path ahead", there's definitely an illusory wall there. Attack as many times as needed to make it disappear.
+ Explore the hub fully; there's lots of secrets sequestered there.
+ As you explore levels you'll encounter NPCs that you can send back to the hub. Be sure to speak to each of them regularly, until they have exhausted any new dialogue.

Genocyber fucked around with this message at Mar 27, 2017 around 23:44

I felt like doing an effortpost writeup of how weapon infusion works, since a lot of people seem unsure about what to do with their weapons for a given build. If this can get thrown in the OP (with spoiler tags where needed, if you think that's necessary?) that would be helpful. Also if I missed something or someone has anything helpful to add, feel free.

Blacksmith Andre starts with three infusion types available, and can unlock more as you give him embers which you find as you progress through the game. Infusing a weapon or shield requires a gem of the appropriate type and a small amount of souls. You can change a weapon from one infusion type to another, though the first gem isn't refunded, or you can use a Shriving Stone to remove the infusion altogether if you'd like.

All infusions except for Raw lower the base physical damage slightly. The plain Dagger seems to be an exception, with all the elemental infusions actually increasing its base damage.

Weapon buffs such as pine resins and spells that affect your weapon can ONLY be applied to normal, Refined, Sharp, Heavy, and Raw weapons.

Starting Infusions:

Refined - Slightly lowers the highest among STR and DEX scaling, then brings the other one up to that level.
Raw - Removes all scaling, significantly increases base physical damage.
Fire - Removes all scaling, adds flat fire damage

Generally speaking you will always want to infuse a weapon you're using, as there will be one if not several options that are outright better than an uninfused weapon. Starting off when you don't have much for stats, Raw or one of the non-scaling elemental infusions like Fire and Deep will be your best option, depending on what enemies you're going to be fighting since certain ones have heavy resistances or weaknesses. Once you have solid offensive stats, STR builds will usually want Heavy, DEX builds will usually want Sharp, and Quality builds will usually want Refined. Spellcaster builds are a bit more situational - a DEX or STR caster hybrid will generally want Heavy/Sharp so they can enchant it, a pure caster can use Raw with enchantments or forego them for one of the elemental scaling infusions if their appropriate stat(s) are high enough, and again it depends on what types of enemies you're going to be fighting.

The type of weapon you're modifying matters as well. Weapons with high base damage benefit more from flat damage infusions, weapons with high scaling benefit more from infusions that add or increase scaling. All gems are farmable in at least one location, so it doesn't hurt to experiment to find out what works.

Genocyber fucked around with this message at May 17, 2016 around 18:15

Is it just me, or does Deprived actually look like the best class to start out with? They start at the lowest level out of all the starting classes, so more room to fit stats in, and their stats are all balanced. Yeah, it sucks to start out naked, but come on, fashion souls has to start somewhere, why don't you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and make something of yourself in this new, competitive world of looking the best? Plus the club apparently kicks rear end.

As an aside, I find myself sort of hoping that one of the DLCs has us traveling to some of DS2's locations, since the base game has so much heavy DS1 stuff.

EDIT: Also that K***ht censor is beautiful, and I can't believe I didn't notice it before.

Is it just me, or does Deprived actually look like the best class to start out with? They start at the lowest level out of all the starting classes, so more room to fit stats in, and their stats are all balanced. Yeah, it sucks to start out naked, but come on, fashion souls has to start somewhere, why don't you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and make something of yourself in this new, competitive world of looking the best? Plus the club apparently kicks rear end.

It's kind of bad for min/maxing due to having >7 luck, since you only want luck if you're going to do a luck-centered build. Starting naked is also actually more difficult now because defense has a greater effect at mitigating damage than it did in previous games. It does start with the club though, which has a rad Skill.

Is it just me, or does Deprived actually look like the best class to start out with? They start at the lowest level out of all the starting classes, so more room to fit stats in, and their stats are all balanced. Yeah, it sucks to start out naked, but come on, fashion souls has to start somewhere, why don't you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and make something of yourself in this new, competitive world of looking the best? Plus the club apparently kicks rear end.

If you want to be all willy-nilly with stats, it's probably fine. But if you wanted to be heavily focused in, say, End, Vig, and Str, the Warrior would be at SL 7 for what the Deprived would have to level to 12 to match it in. This is important if you like to make fixed-level characters for jolly cooperation, or similar online activities.

+ There may be hidden paths behind illusory walls. Hit walls if you think they don't fit in. If there is a message on the ground that says "illusory wall ahead" or "hidden path ahead", there's definitely an illusory wall there. Attack as many times as needed to make it disappear.

Please don't think I'm intentionally making GBS threads up the thread or anything, but I'm trying to get into the series and I'm just not digging it. I recently picked up DS 1 (PC) and went into a game with a monumentally lovely control scheme, unintuitive play, and a laundry list of some relatively basic questions I had to consult a wiki for.

I really want to get into the game - I love the try-until-success concept, the art, and the oh-poo poo terror of seeing a new boss - but so far it's just flaccid rear end. What am I doing wrong?

it's thief time again, time to slice the heels of giant foes and get squashed a dozen times trying to get them to bleed out

edit: on that note, it's worth mentioning that there are shields out there with WEAPON SKILL as their ability. instead of a parry, you use the weapon skill in your right/left hand, depending on the hand the shield is in. there's a lot you can do with this, so don't feel inclined to always go with a parry shield!

Weeping Wound fucked around with this message at Apr 11, 2016 around 02:02

Please don't think I'm intentionally making GBS threads up the thread or anything, but I'm trying to get into the series and I'm just not digging it. I recently picked up DS 1 (PC) and went into a game with a monumentally lovely control scheme, unintuitive play, and a laundry list of some relatively basic questions I had to consult a wiki for.

I really want to get into the game - I love the try-until-success concept, the art, and the oh-poo poo terror of seeing a new boss - but so far it's just flaccid rear end. What am I doing wrong?

Playing with kb+m ? Use a controller, jumping aside, the controls are pretty tight.

The game can be pretty cryptic but try talking to npcs all the time, they'll usually tell you some important tips (and read the item descriptions). For the first run I'd only read the wiki about weapon upgrades/infusion and stats.

ZZZorcerer fucked around with this message at Apr 11, 2016 around 02:06

Please don't think I'm intentionally making GBS threads up the thread or anything, but I'm trying to get into the series and I'm just not digging it. I recently picked up DS 1 (PC) and went into a game with a monumentally lovely control scheme, unintuitive play, and a laundry list of some relatively basic questions I had to consult a wiki for.

I really want to get into the game - I love the try-until-success concept, the art, and the oh-poo poo terror of seeing a new boss - but so far it's just flaccid rear end. What am I doing wrong?

Are you playing with a keyboard+mouse? The default controls are infamously lovely and can easily ruin the game. I found a setup that worked for me but it took like 2 hours of tinkering, and most people call it crazy. If you really want to play these games you should probably just get a controller.

As for the wiki consulting, these games can be obtuse at times. Its fun to figure stuff out on your own but sometimes that simply isn't possible. The best way to handle that is to just ask in one of the threads. There are more than enough people that know every last stupid detail about this series.

edit: on that note, it's worth mentioning that there are shields out there with WEAPON SKILL as their ability. instead of a parry, you use the weapon skill in your right/left hand, depending on the hand the shield is in. there's a lot you can do with this, so don't feel inclined to always go with a parry shield!

I don't get this. Does it activate the weapon skill of a weapon you have equipped in the same slot as the shield but aren't swapped too? Cause if it just activates the skill of the weapon in your other hand I don't get what its doing that you couldn't just do by hitting the skill button.

Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at Apr 11, 2016 around 02:04

I don't get this. Does it activate the weapon skill of a weapon you have equipped in the same slot as the shield but aren't swapped too? Cause if it just activates the skill of the weapon in your other hand I don't get what its doing that you couldn't just do by hitting the skill button.

it activates the skill of the weapon you're currently holding in the other hand without two-handing, so you can continue to block or do a quickstep or shout at your enemy or whatever